Wanted
by dpluver
Summary: After being trapped in his parents' lab for an indefinite period of time, Danny wakes up to a world where ghosts aren't the only "living dead." With faulty ghost powers & loved ones to protect, can Danny save everyone or will this be the end of humanity?
1. Awakening

**Welcome to my new multi-chapter story. Given that my most of my other stories are nearing their final chapters, I wanted to have another project waiting in the wings for when I complete them. My new favorite television show is "The Walking Dead" and while this is NOT a crossover, I have been rather obsessed with zombies as of late and would like to incorporate that into my DP stories. The title for this story is based on Wanted: Dead or Alive posters, because zombies want fresh meat any way they can get it, amiright? **

**This will be a bit gruesome at times, as I'm trying out some new descriptive writing techniques. So if you can't handle horror-type stuff, I wouldn't recommend reading this. It is rated T for a reason. But if you think you have what it takes, then proceed with caution and enjoy one of my first horror-type stories (those who have read my fanfiction before know I'm more of a humorous writer).**

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…

It was quiet.

But not too quiet.

Somewhere in the darkness, there was the rhythmic humming of a power generator accompanied by the sound of a swarm of flies buzzing overhead. There was an ethereal green portal at one end of the room and an enormous, blue-glassed enclosure at the other. Broken shards of glass and empty test tubes littered the linoleum floor in the middle of the dimly lit lab, and the unmistakeable scent of rotting blood still hung in the air from where it had spilt onto several documents that might have once been worth something to a scientifically-inclined individual.

In the glowing cage, there was a boy dressed in a black jumpsuit with white gloves and boots. His hair was an equally untarnished white, a stark contrast to the rest of the lab, which was coated in blood, ectoplasm, and spoiled coffee.

Like clockwork, his eyes suddenly fluttered open. There had been no trigger for this; his unconscious mind had merely decided that now was the time to wake up. His glowing green eyes did not immediately register the destruction surrounding him, as a personal once-over was the first order of business.

After determining that he was still in his ghost form—and thus, safe from his parents' prying eyes—Danny struggled against his restraints. One snapped off as soon as he tugged on it; the other took a little more effort. They had clearly weakened over time; how long had he been in here?

Within seconds, he was free to move about the small room, though it was what lay beyond the walls of his enclosure that caught his attention. Despite the dimness of lab, he could visibly see several tables upturned, weapons scattered about haphazardly, and the floor coated in various substances that he didn't want to identify for fear his suspicions would be confirmed.

"Jazz?"

He called out the first name that came to mind, as it was imperative that he remembered he was Phantom and could not allow himself to slip up in front of his parents. The ghostly clock on the wall told him it was two-seventeen in the morning. Strangely, Danny felt wide awake and quite well-rested.

Limping slightly as he made his way around his confined quarters, Danny found a rusty door hanging on its last hinges at the south corner. He floated upwards, preparing to use all of his strength to tear the door from its socket, but he needn't have bothered; it came off nearly as easily as his restraints had.

With half of the door unhinged, Danny was just scrawny enough to slip through the cracks. He froze as he landed on the ground beyond the cell, waiting for some sort of ghost alarm to go off, indicating his escape, but nothing came.

Then it hit him: the intense smell of days' old blood and rotting flesh from all around him.

Forcing his gag reflex to hold back the vomit that was rapidly rising in his throat, Danny closed his eyes and held his nose tightly to cut off his sense of smell. It was so rancid that his eyes were watering, and even with his nose thoroughly plugged up, he couldn't forget the smell. It wasn't even the sickeningly sweet scent of blood pouring from a wound—Danny knew this smell from the numerous times he had been bullied throughout his school career—but old, viscous blood that had been left to dry in various cracks along the floor of the once-spotless lab.

_Keep moving, Fenton, _Danny mentally urged himself onward to escape this putrid nightmare. Surely there would be a good explanation for the unkempt state of his parents' lab.

Just as Danny opened his eyes and readied himself to proceed forward, however, another horrific sight met his eyes: a cold, lifeless hand lying near the stairway. Its owner was nowhere to be found, and from the looks of the dried stream of blood settled beneath it, the hand had been cut from its source a long time ago.

Danny couldn't keep the bile in his mouth back any longer and released the foul liquid at once. There was a dreadful burning sensation in his throat as it made its exit, but it felt better to get it all out instead of trying to continually suppress it. He had seen plenty of frightening things over the years, but the thought of a normal human hand, detached from its source, was beyond what he could possibly handle.

"Mom?" he called out, no longer fully caring whether his parents discovered him or not. There wasn't a single doubt in his mind that this was one of the worst nightmares he'd ever experienced. It was devastatingly simplistic, yet the sights and smells outweighed any other night terror he had experienced before.

He limped up the stairs, trying to keep his eyes trained on the path ahead in order to ignore the blood-splattered walls all around him. His body felt incredibly weak, but fear prodded him along.

_It's a dream, it's a dream,_ he continuously repeated in his head. He couldn't allow it to be anything else, especially if that blood belonged to…

A small cry escaped his lips as he reached the kitchen. All of the cabinets were opened, the table was smashed to pieces, and the refrigerator was flipped over on its side. Breathing hard, Danny crept over to the fallen fridge and peeked inside. Using the ominously flickering kitchen light to see, he saw that the meat had been gnawed off to the bones, but all of the produce—the lettuce, the apples, the casseroles—was completely rotten and brown. Maggots were sluggishly squirming in and out of the cheeses, and what appeared to be an old jug of milk actually contained a pale yellow liquid with cottage cheese-like chunks floating at the surface.

By the looks of it, nobody had touched this stuff in ages.

"Jazz? Mom? Dad?" Danny called out in a hushed voice. He was on the verge of panic, but his mind was moving too slowly to fully grasp what was going on. There was nobody around, and nothing to tell him what day it was. The electricity had been shut down, he discovered when he tried reaching for the phone and heard nothing at the other end. Not even the drone of a disconnected line. Just silence.

Danny was in such a state of shock that it didn't even occur to him to use his ghost powers until after what had to be an hour passed by. By that time, he had reached the top of the stairs, only after inspecting the rest of the downstairs area. There was blood. So much blood. Like a massacre had occurred right in his own home.

The only thing keeping hope alive was that he hadn't discovered any bodies yet. Not even a hint of his sister or his parents.

He wasn't sure if this fact scared him or comforted him.

His and Jazz's rooms were relatively unscathed, but Danny did notice the subtlest hints of footprints etched in—you guessed it—blood, leading to his parents' room.

"Mom?" Danny called out, tears springing to his eyes as he edged towards their door. Every ounce of his being was begging for that blood not to be that of his parents'. 'Grief' wouldn't even begin to cover it if that were the case.

It was a whole new level of horror that Danny wasn't accustomed to. It was one thing to fight off dead spirits; it was something else to witness a scene of devastation brought down upon humans—his own _family_—by an unknown foe. The absolute silence around him was even more unsettling than the overabundance of blood.

Oh, what Danny would give to hear someone—anyone—talk to him right now. Someone to tell him that everything was going to be okay. Preferably his family, but right now, Danny would've been grateful for anyone.

His hands trembled violently as he reached in to push open the door that led into his parents' room. Danny wanted to shield his eyes, but knew he would have to face whatever awaited him sooner or later.

The door creaked unnaturally as he gave it a firm push and jumped backwards as he allowed it to swing open first. After reminding himself that he needed to remain calm, Danny took in a deep breath and proceeded forward in tiny steps.

As he peered around the edges of the door, he felt both reassured and frightened by the sight of his parents' relatively untouched room. There was a footprint here and there, but no signs of puddles of blood or any more detached body parts.

A sudden creak from above immediately caught his attention. Everything else was so quiet that Danny could clearly hear it, even in between his ragged breathing. Hoping that he would finally find someone to explain to him what in the world was going on, Danny hustled over to the rug that hid the entrance tube leading to the Op Center.

"One to the Op Center," he whispered shakily. It brought him up at once, and Danny breathed a tremendous sigh of relief, as there was no blood or overturned furniture up here.

He collapsed onto the ground, torn between remaining the calm and confident hero he knew he was supposed to be and giving into the horrified tears that were threatening to fall any second now. Nothing would ever be able to erase what he just saw, and his confidence in the nightmare theory was cracking the longer he remained here. It was much too real for him to be asleep.

Just as a single tear was about to slip from his eye, Danny heard the faintest _click_ of a gun trigger just behind his ear. He attempted to turn his head around to face the one holding the weapon, but the gun poked him in the back of his head just as he tried doing so.

He slowly turned his head back around to appease his assailant and finally allowed the tear to slip down his cheek.

…

…

**Well, I hope you enjoyed this little introduction. More to come, but for now, have a happy Halloween and review if you dare ;)**


	2. Realization

**Thanks for the entertaining comments on the previous chapter! This is quite a departure from my usual writing so I wasn't sure how well it would be received. Glad to know that people like it :-)**

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"Who are you?" Danny whispered.

The tip of the gun was still digging into the back of his head, and there had been several tense moments of silence before he decided he would have to be the first one to speak.

"How did you escape?"

Danny's green eyes shot open at the sound of her voice.

At that moment, he nearly whipped his head around, just so he could know that she truly was alive and all right, but the loaded gun against his skull reminded him that no sudden movements were allowed.

But the similarities were unmistakeable. He had been hearing that voice—both the warm, motherly tone and angry ghost hunter tone—nearly every day of his entire life. It had to be her. Even though he was in ghost mode and therefore being looked upon as the enemy, Danny couldn't help but feel elated to know that she was near.

"The door hinges rusted away," he said in a low voice. "How long was I in there for, Maddie?"

The gun withdrew from his head at once.

"How do you know who I am?"

In spite of the horrific circumstances he was in at the moment, Danny smiled. "Come on, how can I not know that voice? And you've always been the one readily pointing a gun at me before getting down to the chitchat."

Testing his luck, Danny slowly swivelled his head around to get a glimpse of her. His heart leaped in his throat as he saw his mom standing just behind him in her usual teal-blue jumpsuit. She looked just like she had the day she and his dad had captured him and locked him away for "future experimentation." The only noticeable changes were the weary lines etched into her face and the dark circles beneath her eyes.

She was regarding him carefully for quite some time. While the hesitation was a welcome break from the immediate ghost-annihilation mode he normally saw with his parents, it was still agonizing to have to remain at a safe distance from each other like this. In fact, it took quite a lot of effort for Danny not to just run into his mom's arms and hug her as though he would never see her again.

Instead, he twitched in place, deliriously happy to see her alive and safe, but also devastated that he hadn't thought of transforming back before going up to the Op Center.

"Mind explaining what's going on?" he asked at last, opting to examine the darker details of his day in order to forget his painfully sad reunion with his mom.

Maddie stared at him for several unbearably long seconds. Startlingly, tears started forming in her eyes and had it been anyone else in front of her, she probably would have completely broken down crying. This was still a relatively controlled expression of emotion, but her defenses were on the decline. She continued to keep the weapon trained on Danny's face, but it was a half-hearted attempt to threaten him, unlike so many of their previous encounters.

"M-Maddie?" Danny asked softly. His voice was full of concern, though his mom wouldn't view it as such. He unwittingly took a step towards her, thinking of placing a hand on her shoulder for comfort, but he was taken aback when she suddenly jerked her head up and stiffened her grip on the gun.

"You remember the day my husband and I captured you-" Danny nodded, thinking back on that awful day when Jazz had still been at school and his parents had managed to suck him into the Fenton thermos on his flight home, "-we placed you in the Containment Unit for ectoplasmic examination. Our first order of business was something Jack had been working on at the time, a liquid version of his Ecto-Stoppo-"

"-Power-Erfier," Danny finished for her, almost breaking his neutral expression to smile at the stupid name his dad had given the machine. He stopped his lips from moving upward as soon as he noticed his mom giving him a strange look.

"Precisely," Maddie backed away from him as she spoke but did not put down the gun. "As it turns out, Jack went over the recommended dosage and you unexpectedly fell into a coma."

"What?" Danny exclaimed.

Maddie sighed, ignoring her enemy's panicked outburst. "To preserve the ethical integrity of our research, we were forced to cease all experimentation until you woke up. By my calculations, you were supposed to have regained consciousness the following day. Not that it mattered, because that's when the Walkers arrived in Amity Park."

"Walker? You mean the ghost?"

"Not a ghost. _Walkers_,_" _Maddie's eyes seemed to glaze over as she said this. Her gaze then travelled to a nearby window. Danny darted a hesitant glance at his mom, then, figuring he had been granted permission to do so, walked over to one of the Op Center's enormous glass panels and observed the street below.

The sight that met him wasn't a joyful one. There was debris littering the streets, cars flipped carelessly onto their sides, and shattered windows in nearly every home in the proximity. But Danny's attention wasn't focused on the damaged property. He was staring at the people who were mulling around the area.

They wouldn't have been so alarming if they hadn't been walking in such erratic, unnatural patterns, as though they had all sustained serious leg injuries. They seemed to have no definite direction, and even from this height, Danny could see their tattered clothing covered in blood and grime. Their faces were extraordinarily pale, even more so than a ghost. Some were so clumsy that they bumped into each other, but didn't even seem to notice as they switched gears and hobbled off in another direction before bumping or tripping over something else.

Danny understood at once: these weren't normal human beings.

"W-what are they?" Danny asked in a high voice. He vaguely recognized one of them as Nathan, a fellow student from Casper High. The boy wandered aimlessly in circles before tripping over a lifeless figure whose head had been violently smashed against the edge of a curb. Nathan's body shuddered upon landing, and he did not get back onto his feet.

Unable to continue watching the pitiful display of the "Walkers" moving about, Danny turned back to his mom.

"Walkers. They're like _you_," she spat accusingly. "They're dead. Or they're _supposed_ to be."

Danny had had plenty of rough encounters with his parents before, but this time, his mom's words cut like knives. He hated the way she was glaring at him, like he was somehow responsible for whatever freakish catastrophe was occurring beyond the walls of the Op Center.

"We had no time to escape," Maddie continued as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her grip on the gun was shaky at best, but she looked angry enough to fire at any given moment. "They just…broke in. My husband was out and my children-"

Danny watched in dismay as his mom, for the first time in his life, broke down into sobs. She set the gun down and leaned against a nearby desk for support, trying to wipe away her tears so as to appear less weak in front of this familiar ghostly foe. But it was no use; the tears were flowing freely against her will.

"My children," she said in a broken voice. "Were at school. There were at least twenty of them in the house, all attacking each other. I had no choice but to retreat up here. I tried calling the school, but by then…"

Ignoring the fact that she was basically trying to justify abandoning him in the basement, Danny decided that the worst possible thing in the world was having to see his mom cry and not being able to do anything to comfort her. She would never accept the warm embrace from a ghost, even one that was secretly her own son.

"B-By then it h-had been overrun," she finished in an emotionless voice.

Danny felt his heart turn to ice as the weight of her words came crashing down on him. His friends, his family, his teachers…were they all like those unhuman-like monsters that were limping around the streets down below?

"How long was I imprisoned in the lab?" Danny asked in a hollow voice. He now understood that nobody had come to rescue him because the area had been completely infested at the time. His only protection had been the reinforced glass enclosure.

But as far as Maddie was concerned, he was a ghost, just another one of the living dead. His mom couldn't have possibly imagined that she was leaving her own son at the mercy of the flesh-eating intruders.

While that explained the blood and guts everywhere, it didn't explain how the food had spoiled so quickly. If his mom's calculations had estimated that he would come out of the coma within a day or two, then why did the rotten food look much older than that?

As the tears finally began to dwindle away, Maddie looked at him directly. "About four or five weeks."

...

...

**Of course it's Maddie. Kickass moms always survive the initial outbreak of disasters, right? Plus, I love writing Maddie/Phantom interactions, so I just couldn't help myself. Hope you all liked it, and even if you didn't, feel free to leave constructive criticism :-) **


	3. Encounter

**Thank you again to my lovely reviewers of this gruesome tale! Things are about to get interesting...**

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><p>Danny couldn't sleep that night.<p>

He didn't know if that was due to the unhuman-like moaning and groaning echoing from the streets below or the startling realization that he had been trapped in some kind of subconscious sleep in his parents lab for over a month.

He had fought off the baddest of the bad when it came to ghosts. He had beat out the governmental agents, Guys in White, despite their many attempts to harm him. He had survived Plasmius' forced cloning tests via electrocution.

But would he be able—or even want—to survive in a world where humans were no longer truly human?

As far as his mom would let on, the majority of the town had come down with this sickness. The extent of the epidemic's affect in other towns was unknown, as there was no operational television nor radio or internet to keep them informed. Nearly all of their technology had failed, even in the Op Center, due to the permanent power outage. Tucker's worst nightmare.

At the end of the day, while Maddie was getting ready to go to sleep, Danny had distracted himself by observing the Walkers. Not the best idea for his psyche in retrospect, but he had needed something to keep him awake until after his mom fell asleep, as she didn't believe ghosts were capable of achieving a state of slumber.

They were hideous. Gashes marred their once-human faces, and the ones that hadn't fallen over or gotten stuck in trash cans were limping around in circles like drunkards with no sense of direction. They still retained their human figures, sure, but none of their intrinsic humanity remained, by the looks and sounds of them. In short, they had become monsters.

Like Danny, from his mom's point of view.

He sat in a corner not too long after, having fallen ill from observing the Walkers for too long.

Danny Phantom, Amity Park's protector, had failed his people. He knew if Jazz or Sam were here, they would go on with the usual "It's not your fault" crap, but right now, the burden of what grisly fate had been delivered to the citizens of Amity Park weighed heavily upon Danny's shoulders.

Was this curable? Maddie hadn't been able to offer a definitive yes or no. Regardless of her response, that didn't stop Danny from feeling fully responsible for the state these people were in. As he had watched them, their faces would slowly connect to distant memories in his mind.

The limping young woman with the bloodstained blonde hair and missing arm, for example. Danny remembered her from the time a shady looking fellow had stalked her across town and once Danny noticed what was happening, he had been able to turn her invisible and fly her to a safe location. "Thank you," she had told him in a lovely voice as he soared off into the night sky.

Now she was just hissing and groaning like the rest of them.

Danny didn't know how this had happened, but the cause didn't matter. He duty was to protect the people of Amity Park. From ghosts, from everyday criminal activity, you name it. He knew it was a stretch to say that he could prevent a disease that essentially zombifies its victims, but nevertheless, he continued to blame himself. His mom's unrelenting comparisons between him and the Walkers didn't help.

His stomach growled angrily around the time the sun was rising. Hoping his mom would stay asleep long enough to not notice him opening the fridge, Danny slowly peeked inside. There was almost no food left. Maybe one meal for one person. How in the world had his mom managed to survive on so few supplies?

Danny jumped at the sound of his mom waking up behind him. She had worn her Specter Deflector on her waist to protect her from the attacks she was expecting from Danny while she was in such a vulnerable state of slumber. They never came, of course, but Danny had to remind himself that his desperate desire from a comforting, motherly hug simply wasn't going to happen for as long as he was in ghost mode and she was wearing the belt.

"We should go outside," Danny announced once she was fully awake.

"_We?_" Maddie glared at him.

"You're almost out of food," Danny pointed out, gesturing to the refrigerator.

"What does it matter to you, ghost? You don't need edible sustenance to survive."

_More than you know_, Danny thought as his mind wandered to visual images of his favorite items at the Nasty Burger. Hamburgers with double the onions, the chilli cheese fries that always grossed out Sam, triple chocolate milkshakes...

_Stop it!_ Danny ordered himself as his mouth began to salivate at the thought of all that delicious food.

"I'm just saying...for your sake. We should go looking for more food. For you," Danny added, wondering how he'd be able to eat with his mom watching his every move. Apocalyptic situation or not, Maddie Fenton was still a scientist that was hell bent on studying Danny Phantom, and here he was, willingly remaining around her without flying off dramatically into the distance as he so often did after a confrontation between the two of them.

"Are you under the impression that you're permanently welcome here?" Maddie asked him sharply after several seconds of silence.

As much as Danny wanted to scream—"Of course I do, I _live_ here!"—he instead sighed and shook his head. "Look, I know we've had our problems in the past Mo-Maddie, but at least for now, I was sort of hoping you'd kick the grudge so we can survive _that_," Danny pointed to the Walkers down on the street.

His mom gazed at him with steely, determined eyes. Undeterred, Danny stared right back, wishing for nothing more than to be Danny Fenton right now.

"For now, fine," Maddie said at last. "But I'll have you know, I still-"

"- don't trust me and still want to rip me apart, molecule by molecule once this catastrophe is resolved, I get it," Danny said irritably. He held out his white gloved hand. "Is this a truce, then?"

"Temporarily," Maddie said as she reluctantly shook his hand. She immediately withdrew, as though despising herself for agreeing to a truce with a putrid, protoplasmic ghost. Not just that, _Danny Phantom_, her sworn enemy. The next few days were going to be interesting, to say the least.

"Okay cool," Danny said, trying to hide the smile dancing at his lips. His mom agreeing not to obliterate him was definitely a step in the right direction. "So, we're going to need a plan..."

Just as he started talking, there was a small bang coming from behind them. Thinking instinctively, Maddie grabbed a gun as the two whirled around to face the foe.

At the exit door—composed of bulletproof plexiglass with reinforced titanium steel edges—was a Walker. It was a girl with light brown skin that had been bitten in some places, completely chewed off in others. Her clothes were in tatters, and what little cloth remained on her body was stained brown from old outflows of blood. The face was the worst of it, though. Her skin appeared to have been plucked off the left side, the same way a person would pluck meat from a chicken breast. Some areas were still coated in a layer of vibrant pink flesh, while other areas had been plucked all the way down to the dull white of what had to be her skull. Among the masses of gooey red flesh of what remained of her face, her left eye was missing, leaving a dark socket in its place. Her throat was torn open, leaving nothing but her spine and a few fleshy strings to keep her head and body attached.

This made her ragged breathing all the more horrifying as a mixture of blood and drool would bubble to the surface and spill down her neck with each breath. It was something of a hiss at times, a painful wheeze during others.

"_Valerie_," Danny whispered as her lone eye turned to him. His heart pounded as they made eye contact and she pounded on the door, wanting to get to the fresh meat that she could obviously sense was nearby.

Danny suddenly felt like puking again. It was one thing to watch the Walkers down on the streets; it was a whole other thing to see one right in front of him. And not just a Walker, but _Valerie_.

His school friend.

One time crush.

Ghost fighting nemesis.

How had such a strong girl fallen to such a terrible disease?

Just as tears began sliding down his cheeks, he heard the firing of a gun from somewhere above the Op Center.

Everything happened in slow motion: Danny went from trying to visualize the monster in front of him as the tough, valiant ghost fighter she once was, to watching her get shot in the head and fall over, motionless.

Too horrified for words, Danny screamed.

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><p><strong>Review? :)<strong>


	4. Terrorized

**Thank you everyone for the awesome comments on the previous chapter. I'm thrilled to see that people are enjoying my gorier-type of writing style!**

**Season 2 finale of "The Walking Dead" was amazing (for anyone that cares about that show, lol). Today I officially ordered my first comic book (a whopping 1,000+ pages...the one the show is based on)…I blame DP for turning me into a comic book/superhero-obsessed nerd. Anyway, onto the story! :D**

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><p>Abandoning all common sense, Danny ran out into the open to where her lifeless body lay. She couldn't be dead. He knew she still had to be alive, somehow. She was just...taking a nap...<p>

"Valerie," he whispered with tears in his eyes as he knelt by her battered body. He didn't want it to be true, but there was no denying it: Valerie was gone. What remained of her lone eye was still open, as though it were blaming him for being too late to save her. With a trembling hand, he gently covered it with her eyelid.

He cradled her limp form for quite some time, barely able to contain the strangled sob that he was on the brink of letting go. Valerie, along with Sam, was one of the toughest girls he knew. She had been fighting ghosts for months, just as he had, except she didn't have the advantage of being part ghost. Even with the unequal playing field, she had fought valiantly and constantly kept Danny on his toes. It used to annoy him, but when their feud transformed into something of a rivalry, he actually enjoyed their fights and began looking forward to the afternoons when the Red Huntress went on her pre-homework ghost patrols.

The bloodied, beaten body in front of him was _not_ the girl he once knew. The Valerie that Danny knew would never have been defeated so easily.

He heard footsteps behind him, but he didn't care to know who or what it was. If this was to become an everyday occurrence, then Danny wasn't so sure he wanted to remain in this post-apocalyptic Amity Park anymore.

"Phantom..."

It was his mom. He didn't want her to see him like this, nor did he want to see her face, with the knowledge that she had done this to Valerie. The absolute worst part of this situation was that he was stuck in ghost mode, when he wanted nothing more than to run into his mom's arms and for her to comfort him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay.

But he wasn't five years old anymore. He also wasn't Danny _Fenton_ at the moment, though the prospect of revealing his secret to his mom was becoming more enticing with every new horror that presented itself to him.

"Phantom," she repeated. From the sound of it, she was standing just a few feet behind him.

"Don't call me that," he snapped. He still didn't turn around, but being continuously reminded that he, Danny _Phantom_, had been unable to prevent the death of one of his own friends was driving him mad. He didn't care if she connected the dots, because right now, "Phantom" was the last thing he wanted to be called. In a world where people had become snarling, flesh-eating monsters, he wanted nothing more than to retain what little humanity he had left.

"Danny?" her voice had an odd pitch to it, as though it pained her to call him by that name.

Once the tears had mostly subsided and his breathing was more controlled, Danny felt safe to face his mom. Her facial expression was unlike anything he'd ever seen on her face before; he immediately had to look away once his eyes landed on the gun hanging limply in her hand.

"Danny."

Again, he could clearly sense that she loathed calling him that.

"Why?" was all he could choke out. To prevent another near-emotional breakdown, his eyes remained abnormally focused on his white-gloved hands, which were now stained with the remnants of blood. Valerie's blood. He couldn't bring himself to turn his hands intangible to remove the stains. Instead, they would serve as a reminder for what happens when Amity Park's hero isn't there to save the ones he vowed to protect.

"Pha-_Danny..._they're not-"

"What? _Human_? Then why don't you waste me while you're at it?" Danny shouted. For good measure, he grabbed her hand holding the gun and positioned the barrel against his forehead. "Go on, it's what you've always wanted to do, isn't it? If you're so hell-bent on killing 'monsters' then go on, _pull the trigger!_"

Maddie was deeply alarmed by the ghost boy's outburst. Here it was, the first cognizant being—human or otherwise—she had spoken to after nearly a month of devastating solitude...and he wanted her to destroy him. Not that a regular bullet would have done anything, with him being a ghost and all, but the shocking display of anger from him had definitely caught her off guard. Not just anger, either. Either she needed to find a living optometrist to get her eyes checked, or she actually saw the faintest hints of tears threatening to spill from those intense green eyes.

He was right in one aspect; she had always wanted to capture him. But utterly destroy him? Not at all. And kill him? That wasn't even possible!

"No," she whispered shakily, withdrawing the gun from his forehead and tossing it off to the side after a moment of thoughtful consideration. In all her years as a ghost expert, Maddie never would have thought she'd come this close to a ghost of such power and prominence. And yet, here he was—the ever-elusive Danny Phantom—on his knees and entirely at her mercy.

Danny wasn't sure what surprised him more: the fact that his mom refused to waste his alter ego, or when she offered a hand to help him to his feet. However, still distraught over what had happened to Valerie, he ignored it and stood up on his own. Normally he would have just let the lack of gravity pull him upwards, but for some reason, he physically had to pick himself up. Not that he really noticed, anyway.

Unable to overcome the shock of Valerie's violent death, Danny numbly made his way back into the Op Center. Maddie began relocking the door behind them, just as another one of the Walkers made its way onto the roof. Danny didn't recognize this new one, but that didn't keep him from closing his eyes and shuddering when the gunshot echoed around the metal inners of the Op Center. The sound of another body collapsing to the ground was almost too much to bear.

"Good shot," he muttered darkly when his mom came back into the main area of the Op Center.

"Just doing what it takes to survive," she said in a weary voice. "They're not coherent beings, Phantom, you have to realize that."

Danny flinched at his mom calling him that again, but didn't bother correcting her. He hated "Phantom" because it served only as a brutal reminder of his vast accumulation of failures that lay beyond the secure walls of his home. But "Danny," without the hint of motherly fondness behind it, felt cold and unnatural. Right now, he honestly wouldn't have minded if she simply stopped talking to him.

"Yesterday, you told me that they were like me-"

"I was wrong," she cut him off. This seemed to surprise both of them, but Maddie didn't retract her statement. "Though scientifically speaking, both you and the Walkers are dead-"

"-they seem alive to me-"

"-but they've lost their _humanity_. They crave flesh, not regular food. They are incapable of speech—believe me, I've tested this. They are merely reanimated corpses. The brain stem becomes active upon resurrection, but the frontal lobes remain dormant."

"Frontal...what?"

"Frontal lobes. The neocortex. The part of the brain that allows for sensory perception, conscious thought...and language. The part that makes humans..._human_," Maddie whispered.

"So _am_ I like them?" Danny asked softly, gazing down at the streets where Walkers were consuming the remnants of unmoving carcasses. It sickened him to think that anyone could compare them to _him_, half ghost or not. His mom did not reply for a long time. Finally, he turned back to face her, curious to hear what she had to say.

"No," she whispered. "But _why_ aren't you?"

"I'm not like other ghosts. If you and Jack-" both of them flinched at the sound of the patriarch's name, "-would get over your obsession with proving to the world that I'm a terrible person, you would see the good I am—_was_—capable of."

"You refer to yourself as a person. Why?"

Danny took in a deep breath and sighed. It was now or never. His mom had already refused to off him once, and he was pretty sure she would be even less inclined to do so once she found out that her son was still alive. In different circumstances, he could have just left the scene, but in this frightful new setting, he needed his mom more than ever. What was the point of hiding anymore?

"Well...it's a long story, but-"

Just as he began speaking, there was a massive crash and shattering of glass coming from behind them. Mother and son immediately jumped to their defensive positions as a group of six Walkers stumbled into the Op Center. How they had managed to get onto the roof was anybody's guess, but the fact remained that they were now invading the only place Maddie had once deemed safe from Walker invasions.

Apparently there was a little more spark of critical thinking left in their brains than Maddie had initially believed, as they had ingeniously busted their way inside with the help of a rusty pipe.

"Danny run!" Maddie shouted as she shot three of them in a row. They fell to the ground at once, creating a pool of blood on the floor right where Danny had been sleeping the night before.

"I'm not leaving you," Danny whispered as he prepared an ecto-blast for an oncoming pair of Walkers. As he tried initiating his ghost ray, however, nothing happened. No initial flash of green indicating that he was about to fire, and no surge of power in his palms. Seeing no other alternative, he attempted intangibility. Again, nothing happened. His heart was beginning to race as the reality of his situation dawned on him. He couldn't explain what had happened, but that didn't exactly matter right now. His ghost powers were _gone._

Stranded and powerless, Danny stared wide-eyed as the Walkers lurched towards him, groaning and licking their bloodied lips at the sight of a helpless victim awaiting his doom.

_I hope they don't mind ectoplasm,_ Danny thought grimly as their sallow, blood-caked hands latched onto his arms and dragged him towards them.

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><p><strong>I think you're going to love chapter five. Just sayin'<strong>

**Until next time…reviews are always appreciated :)**


	5. Escape

**Thanks for the comments on the previous chapter. This chapter got split into two parts (not done with the other part, but I figured a faster update would be preferred over a longer chapter/wait). Enjoy~**

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><p>The sound of gunshots, quickly followed by bullets whizzing past just centimeters from his face brought Danny back to his senses. He couldn't consciously force his body to move, though it was already trembling violently on its own accord. Portal accident aside, he had never come so close to getting killed in his life. Luckily, his mom had good aim and managed to take down three Walkers in just two firings.<p>

Ammunition having successfully penetrated their noggins—thus rendering them completely lifeless—they collapsed at his feet. With their grisly hands still latched onto his arms, however, he was dragged down with them. Danny let out a little whimper of despair when the remnants of one of the Walker's brains dribbled out through its skull and onto his formerly pristine white gloves. It felt a bit like jello and slugs, though it was the lasting mental image of squishy pink tissue intertwined with his fingers that terrified him.

"Let's go!" he heard his mom shout over the sound of a gun being reloaded.

Shoving the limp bodies off of him, Danny leaped to his feet and began running. Finding that he was still unable to turn intangible, he wiped the guts on the Op Center's equipment before disappearing down the exit tube with his mom.

In the brief moments they had alone together, Danny instinctively hugged her. It was the same reaction he had for the past several years, and like any good mother, she was always there to comfort her frightened little boy.

Once they hit the floor in his parents' bedroom, it suddenly occurred to Danny that he was still in ghost mode and jumped backwards at once. His mom gave him a strange look, but at least she hadn't objected to the embrace.

"Uh, we need to get out of here," Danny offered weakly, trying to make her forget that hug ever happened.

"Right," Maddie said, eyebrow still raised. "We can try the Specter Speeder, but that's all the way in the basement. Think you can handle it?"

"Yes," Danny said automatically. He didn't like being treated like this, but in this dire situation, he found it hard to really care. "Seeing as Da-Jack's Ecto-Stoppo-Power-Erfier thing is apparently still in effect, though, I'll be needing one of those guns."

"Your powers are still unusable?" Maddie asked, clearly astonished.

"Why do you think I didn't do anything to defend myself back there?" Danny snapped. "Without a weapon, I'll be as useless as my hum-uh, I mean _a_ human."

Maddie looked sceptical, but didn't have much time to argue as three Walkers stormed in on them. With the speed of a Wild West shooter, Maddie withdrew a pistol from her jumpsuit and tossed it to Danny, all the while using her other hand to shoot the incoming flesh-eaters.

Both Fentons winced as one of the Walkers crashed into a family picture on the opposing end of the room upon a direct shot to the head. The sound of gunshots appeared to be drawing more and more Walkers to their location, as new ones were coming through the doorway every few seconds, thus blocking their exit for the time being.

"Any day now," Maddie said sardonically while Danny fumbled with the pistol. He may have been fighting ghosts for months now, but strangely he had yet to learn how to use a gun, as it turned out. After a few more crucial seconds lost to his incompetent weaponry knowledge, his fingers found the trigger guard and once that was safely out of the way, he fired.

"Are you closing your eyes?" Maddie yelled, looking back at Danny, who did in fact, have his eyes closed. His green eyes fluttered open once more, finding only disappointment in that his first-ever gunshot missed the Walkers altogether. This time, he actually aimed and managed to nail one right in the neck. The Walker groaned on impact, but even with its head barely attached to the rest of its body, it lurched forward.

"Third time's the charm," Danny whispered grimly as he fired another shot, this time hitting the target exactly where he wanted it to. Shooting people—with guns, instead of ghost rays, at that—went completely against everything Danny Phantom stood for, but he was no longer running on moral tenacity. The only thing he had left was adrenaline and an undying determination to protect his mom.

"Let's go!" Maddie said once there was a pause in the influx of Walkers. The pile of bodies in the doorway was so great that they could not merely step over them. Wishing that he could at least have retained his ability to fly, Danny closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound of flesh squelching underfoot.

Once in the hallway, Maddie took off running and Danny followed suit. They were only met by one Walker on their way to the stairs, in which Maddie elbowed over the side railing. Danny's body shuddered at the sound of the groaning creature—_human_—hitting the floor some twenty feet below; he didn't think he would ever grow desensitized to that sound.

Maddie and Danny collectively gasped when they reached the living room. It was nothing short of a massacre in here, with disconnected body parts adorning their couch, a body that looked somewhat like the former mayor hunched over the television, and a pool of dried blood splattered on the carpet Maddie had kept remarkably clean for so many years.

"This place was spotless two days ago," Danny said in a hollow voice, trying to avoid looking at the brunette Walker who was dragging herself through the front door due to her lack of legs.

Businesslike as ever, Maddie grabbed him by the arm and led him to the door that led to the basement. The smell of rotting food overwhelmed them, but plugging their noses as they traversed the kitchen was enough to block out the majority of the stench.

Danny barely noticed the detached hand on his way down the stairs. It seemed like weeks had passed since he first saw that; little did he know at the time how much worse it was about to get. Compared to the horrors that awaited them in the main area of the house, a mere hand was almost a welcomed sight.

"It's gone!"

Danny did a three-sixty and realized she was right: the Specter Speeder was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe someone took it?"

"But we just added a genetic lock to it," Maddie said falteringly. "Only a Fenton would have been able to take it."

Danny froze. If what his mom said was true, then there were only two people who could have taken it: his dad or Jazz. According to his mom, his dad had been on an overnight trip to some ghost hunters' conference when the outbreak of Walkers began...

So only one option remained: Jazz.

"She's alive," Danny whispered, feeling a burst of hope rising in his chest for the first time in days. "She's _alive_."

"Who?" Maddie asked hollowly, almost unable to restrain her tears by now.

"Jazz," Danny replied simply. He walked over to the ghost portal and inspected it for recent openings. Most of the lab equipment was covered in either flecks of blood or cobwebs, but there was one area that had been disturbed recently: the thumb scanner that activated the portal.

Without a doubt, Jazz was alive. Danny was sure of it. Perhaps she was hiding somewhere in the Ghost Zone, but wherever she was, he knew she was at least safe, with the help of the Specter Speeder.

The thought alone prompted him to continue his search, in spite of the raging hunger in his stomach and horrific smells that contaminated the air.

The sudden crash of the lab door being knocked off its hinges kicked Danny off of Cloud Nine and brought him back to reality. Seeing that there were at least half a dozen or more Walkers entering the lab, Danny knew there would only be one escape.

"I'm almost out of ammo!" Maddie shouted over the sound of gunshots being fired at the oncoming monsters.

Seeing more and more Walkers piling into the lab, forcing his mom back into a corner, Danny made up his mind: they had to go into the Ghost Zone. His mom, as far as he knew, had never been in here before, but she would have to deal with it if she wanted to get out of this with her humanity intact.

Pressing his thumb against the scanner—which, even in ghost mode, allowed him to open the Fenton Portal—Danny grabbed his mom by the arm and pulled her through the swirling green mass just a second before a Walker was about to sink its teeth into her exposed arm.

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><p><strong>Okay so <em>next<em> chapter has the juicy bit. But this one wasn't too shabby, was it? Let me know what you thought :)**


	6. Considerations

**Okay, so that was an unfairly long wait, but hey, at least it wasn't four years, eh? Going into my third (fourth? Losing track of time) week in Europe and absolutely loving it here. I am, however, extremely busy, and it's affecting my updates. *inserts apologies here* Here's a longer chapter to compensate. Also, I will be updating at times other than my usual US time zone (duh), so if you don't want to miss it, there's always the story alert option. Enjoy~**

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><p>"What did you do?"<p>

"Saved you from becoming zombie-breakfast," Danny said irritably as his mom tried shoving him away from her. "You know, if I let go of you, you'll fall into the infinite matter of the Ghost Zone. Unless you want that to happen, I suggest you quit struggling."

"Is that a threat?" Maddie snapped.

Danny sighed. The lack of sleep and month-long starvation was really getting to him, so much so that he seemed to keep forgetting that this was his _mother_ that he was dealing with, not another ghost. He was almost tempted to let go for a second, just to prove his point, but immediately shot the idea down. Scaring her out of her wits was not the best way to convince his mom that his alter ego was the good guy.

"Not a threat, just a warning."

Maddie continued glaring at him, but at least she stopped fidgeting. Her interest was soon centered on the scenery around them: floating purple doors, swirling green masses, and the occasional ghost. It was familiar to Danny and his friends, though to Maddie it was something of a dream to be exploring a world she and her husband had been studying for years.

"Where are we going?" she asked after several minutes of flying in silence. Danny was still busy fighting his inner battle over whether or not he should just come out and tell her the truth, but figuring that she had seen enough surprises for one day, it couldn't hurt to put off telling her at a later date.

"Across town," Danny said simply.

"_Across town?_ But we're in the Ghost Zone—"

"Think you're the only one in Amity Park that has a Ghost Portal?"

"I—wait," Maddie said, suspicion creeping up on her face. "You already know the answer, don't you? Who, then?"

"_Think_, Maddie. Who in Amity Park besides you and your husband had—_has_—a history of studying ghosts?"

"Vlad," she said automatically, though she sounded quite surprised by the idea. "I didn't know he had a portal."

"There's a lot you don't know about your old college pal," Danny muttered under his breath.

"And what makes you think we'll be safe there?"

Danny cringed. His mom was obviously thinking back to one of the many times Vlad had tried convincing her to leave her husband and go live with him, with the Colorado incident being the worst. The thought of seeking refuge with Vlad after that experience had to be a nightmare for her, but it wasn't Vlad's mansion Danny sought after; it was the ectoplasmic experiments in the basement that might be able to get him back to normal in order to more reliably protect his mom and perhaps find other survivors.

_And food_, he thought as his stomach roared with such a magnitude, it would have put his ghostly wail to shame. Unfortunately, this did not go unnoticed by his mom.

"Hungry?" she asked sardonically.

"Actually yeah," Danny admitted. There was simply no way to get around this one. He assumed his half-dead nature was the only thing allowing him to survive for so long with so little sustenance, but he couldn't keep this up much longer. He and his mom needed food; _today_. With any luck, Vlad's trove of cereal at the bottom of the pantry would only be semi-stale; if the Walkers hadn't already gotten to it, anyway.

"What could a ghost possibly need—"

"Food for?" Danny interrupted. "Everything needs—"

"But you're _dead_, yes?"

"So are the Walkers. That doesn't stop them from eating every scrap of fresh flesh in sight."

Maddie's stomach lurched at the mental image.

"Maybe we should stop talking about food?" Danny suggested.

She nodded and averted her head to the side, observing the freakish world around her. There were no ghosts in the area; odd. Her own stomach growled every so often, and after one particularly tumultuous rumble, Danny couldn't hold back his laughter. In spite of the direness of their situation, it was nice to have something to laugh about, no matter how temporary this elation would be.

Seeing his mom watching him with renewed suspicion, he tried to suppress his chuckling fit by biting his lip, but his grin wouldn't fade completely.

"Something funny, ghost?"

_What a buzzkill_, Danny thought, his positivity dissolving into bitter pragmatism at once.

"Oh come on, Maddie," he said, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "I'm the first person you've been able to converse with in over a month and you can't let this grudge go, even just for a little while?"

"I already agreed not to shoot you—"

"I'm not talking about bullets—which you're only hoarding because you need to protect yourself from the things that actually _want_ to hurt you—I'm talking about my name."

"Your name?" Maddie repeated. "Phan—"

"No, it's always been 'Putrid Protoplasm!' Or 'Filthy Ghost!' I mean, at least those aren't as bad as 'Inviso-Bill' was—yes, that was pretty much unbearable, believe me—but if you're going to address me, why does it always have to be name-calling?"

"But you _are_ a gh—"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm a ghost. Does that mean I don't deserve the same…uh, respect as anyone else? What do you have against addressing me by my name?"

Maddie stared at him, unable to respond for quite some time. While it didn't necessarily qualify as an "outburst," it was definitely something she had never heard from the boy before.

_Profoundly mature in argumentation tactics,_ she made a mental note. _Seems to believe he deserves the same treatment as a human being._

"Phan—"

"_Danny_," he said, putting extra emphasis on his first name. He wanted nothing more than for her to put two and two together and start churning up a 'crazy' theory as she had so often done in collusion with his dad, but right now, she kept missing the point. It would have been so easy to just let her work it out for herself, rather than directly _telling _her. He wanted her to know, he truly did. But, having never explicitly told anyone in his life, the truth just wouldn't bubble to the surface. Confirming a theory would be so much easier than having to spell it out for her.

"Danny Phantom," she said in a hollow voice. He stared into her eyes, begging for her to make the connection, but the spark never came.

"Cool, thanks," he said, deflated. Seeing the entrance to Vlad's portal up ahead, he pushed the revelation dilemma to the back of his mind and began readying himself for another onslaught of Walkers.

As much as he hated to admit it, Danny was terrified. Every gunshot, every sound of a body collapsing onto the floor; it shook him up. He didn't know how it had happened, but it bothered him more than he could ever possibly express to someone who still doubted his loyalties to the people of Amity Park. Watching a close friend and classmate die right in front of him…words couldn't fully express his devastation. His eyes blurred with tears as the scene replayed over in his head, clearer than a high-definition television. Every sound, smell, visual detail…none of it could be purged from his mind. His beloved town, the people he had secretly sworn to himself that he would protect, ghost threat or otherwise…the world beyond the Ghost Zone was a trophy of his failures. School grades had never meant much to him, but Danny Phantom's inerasable failure was written in red ink on the streets beyond the comforts of a realm in which he only partially belonged. If it weren't for his mom and the tiny glimmer of hope he was still harboring in his heart about Jazz, he would have lost it altogether.

"You ready?" he asked after pushing away the portal's obstruction.

Her face was ash white, but she still nodded. His mom was brave, oh so brave. Few others would have survived over one month in the circumstances she had had to cope with. Not to mention four weeks, alone and thinking nonstop about the fate of her family members. As far as she knew, all three were still missing. Danny mentally hit himself at this realization. Secret identity be damned; his mom deserved the comfort of knowing her son was still alive!

"Mom," he whispered, but she was already through the portal. He quickly followed after her, breathing a sigh of relief when he discovered his ability to fly had returned. Doing so made him feel weak the longer he remained in the air, however, so he landed back on the smooth linoleum, preserving his energy for an emergency.

"It's quiet," his mom said, too busy scouring the lab to listen to his half-hearted attempts at getting her to pause for a moment and hear him out.

Indeed, it was quiet; too quiet. The lab itself was pristine, clear of any blood or detached limbs.

"We can use this as a safe haven," Maddie announced after twenty minutes of silently pacing through rows of machinery and ectoplasmic weapon vaults. She had found a lone pistol; this actually alarmed Danny. Vlad fought of ghosts with his own ghost powers and the occasional ecto-weapon, yes; what did he need an actual gun for? It wouldn't work on ghosts, and self defense wasn't exactly a major concern for a half-ghost, so that only left one option…

"What are you doing?" Danny asked when his mom opened the door and started up the stairs.

"_We_ need food," Maddie said simply, then continued walking, fully-loaded pistol in hand.

Danny would have smiled at the fact that she had remembered to think of him if it hadn't been for the knot of fearing clenching at his chest as he followed her up into Vlad's study.

He tested his hands for his ghost ray; still dormant. That would at least be enough to get the Walkers out of the way while they escaped, but as much as he _loathed_ it, he would have to continue relying on his gun, which only had three shots left.

His mom reached to top of the stairs first and gasped. Instantly in panic-mode, Danny expended some energy and flew the rest of the way up the stairs.

"What is it?" he asked frantically, then saw where his mom was pointing. The sight almost made him fall to his knees. "_No!_"

It was Vlad. In human form, walking towards them, coated in old blood and groaning slightly. There was a limp in his step and his arms looked like beef jerky that had been nibbled away by ravenous mice: fleshless and showing too much cartilage through what was left of his bicep muscles. His gray hair, once pulled back in a perfectly-composed ponytail, was tarred a nasty brown color in some places and strewn out on all sides, like an electrocuted Einstein. His clothing, no doubt worth more than what the Fenton couple had in their bank account, was in tatters, so much so that a homeless person would have thought them unworthy of wearing.

What hurt Danny the most was the absence of personality. Sure, he hated Vlad at times, there was no questioning that. But the devious glint in his eyes was gone and replaced by hunger. A deadly hunger for the human and half-human in front of him, just a few limps away. The sharp wit and evil smirk were also gone. In their places, hissing and foam dribbling down the edges of his chin. It was disgusting to see how far a human being, particularly one as brilliant as Vlad Masters, could fall.

Although he was still a safe distance away, Maddie grimly held up her pistol. Danny stared at her in shock, wondering if she was really going to shoot him. He may have developed into a creepy guy over the years, but he was still one of her best friends in college. It was almost the equivalent of Danny shooting Sam or Tucker. Just thinking about it hurt more than what Danny could bear at the moment.

He saw her eyes looking at him as her fingers twiddled the trigger. He stared back, wanting to tell her no, let this one live, just this one, but his mouth was too dry to produce any verbalizations.

Taking his non-responsiveness as a signal to go ahead, Maddie's head swivelled back at her target. He was now just six or seven strides away. They could have made a run for it, but was it really worth playing tag with him, knowing they would eventually have to pull the trigger anyway?

"Well…"

It was all Maddie could say.

Just a second or two before firing, a vaguely familiar voice from above them shouted, "Don't shoot him!"

Startled, Maddie's arm dropped, but she still fired. Luckily—if it could be called lucky at all—the bullet only went through Vlad's leg. Howling in unhuman-like mortification, he fell to the side, obviously feeling some variation of pain, but still "alive."

Feeling safe with the only threat in the proximity currently incapacitated, Danny and Maddie looked around for the voice. Danny was the first one to see her: running down a secret stairway that led to the second level of the library was none other than Jazz, fully unblemished and human.

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><p><strong>That's all folks…till next chapter, anyway. I'll make it a goal to update within 3-4 weeks, but no promises. Reviews, as always, are appreciated :)<strong>


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